Modern computing systems comprise numerous electronic components such as CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc. As computing systems become faster and more powerful (e.g., with smaller form factors and faster CPUs or GPUS), more heat is generated within the systems. Without adequate cooling, overheating may occur, and cause physical damage to components within the computing systems; and sometimes even lead to system failures and data losses.
Cooling fans are widely used to remove excessive heat from computing systems by actively exhausting accumulated hot air, thus maintaining suitable temperatures within the computing systems. Therefore, it is important to effectively control the cooling fans to keep internal temperatures of the computing systems within a certain range.
In conventional systems, a baseboard management controller (BMC) is typically used to control cooling fans by directly connecting the BMC to a control pin of each cooling fan. However, cooling fans inside a computing system can have various distances from the BMC. Further, this conventional control method requires a large number of wires to connect the BMC to the various cooling fans present in a conventional system.
Thus, there is a need to control cooling fan modules in a computing system with simpler and more efficient solutions.